Creating an user-defined NOTION score to use as a template that has an Aria MULTI is not so difficult to do--provided you are software engineer and have made sense of busing and routing in the digital music production universe . . .

THOUGHTS

If I were guessing, then I think the problem you encountered is due to specifying different channel pairs in the Aria MULTI, although another possibility is the way you did channel reassignments in the NOTION score . . ,

I am writing a book about all this stuff, which is coming along nicely and is nearly 500 pages, with only another chapter or two to be finished; and one of the things I realized is that while some of this stuff can appear to be vastly complex, it becomes easy when you understand busing and routing . . .

Even though I have played electric bass and electric guitar for decades, usually with elaborate effects pedals--which requires understanding cables, guitar cords, busing, routing, and so forth--it took me a while to realize that it works the same way with digital music, except that instead of being physical guitar cords and so forth, they are virtual . . .

As a general rule, none of this is explained clearly anywhere, and it certainly was not immediately obvious to me; but it eventually started making sense, which for MIDI required taking some courses from Groove3 and macProVideo, which were very helpful and reasonably priced . . .

For the most part, none of this stuff is documented anywhere other than in this forum and soon to be in my book on digital music production, so it usually takes folks a while to make sense of stuff like this, which typically is very frustrating until you realize that it's all new information and overall doing digital music production is on par with flying a spaceship or running a Fortune 100 corporation in terms of complexity . . .

In other words, what you are doing maps to a recording session for Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, or the Beatles where you are doing everything, including managing the microphones and instrument cables, and everything else; so yeah, it's super complex, but it's not more super complex than when it's done at Capitol Records, Sun Records, or Abbey Road Studios . . .

You need to know everything everybody in the recording sessions did, and you probably need to compose the music, as well . . .



That's a lot of stuff . . .

HOW TO PROVIDE THE SOLUTION

There are two things that need to happen:

(1) Create the Aria MULTI and give it an unique name so you can reuse it easily,

(2) Do the channel assignments in the NOTION score and then save the NOTION score so you can use it as a user-defined template.

The word "channel" is used in a variety of ways, where the key bit of information is that what in the Aria player is called a "channel" is not the same as a channel within a bus for routing audio to NOTION is concerned . .

The simple version is that all the instruments in the first Aria MULTI need to be set to "1-2", since Aria sends them to NOTION on the "1'2" bus, virtual cable, or whatever one wants to call it . . .

In other words, all 16 instruments loaded in the Aria MULTI are sent to NOTION in what NOTION understands by default is "1-2", yet within NOTION the "1-2" bus, cable, or whatever will have 16 channels . . .

If you prefer, the "1-2" channel in Aria has 16 "channels" of instrument audio that it sends to NOTION . . .

Making this all the more circular, if you have several Aria MULTI instances, then they also send their instrument audio via the same, high-level "1-2", although it's probably possible to do this on the other high-level "big cable thingys", but I had not done experiments to discover this . . .

My general strategy is to avoid wandering into the MULTI world, but it's something I can do and perhaps makes a bit of sense . . .

Here in the sound isolation studio, I do everything in ReWire sessions with Studio One Professional and NOTION in ",song" layers with 10 to 20 instruments, each of which is a singleton, meaning that if I have 10 Aria instruments, I will have 10 instances of Aria, each with only one instrument, as I do with SampleTank (IK Multimedia), Kontakt (Native Instruments), MachFive 3 (MOTU), and Play (EWQL) . . ,

It's primitive; it works for me; and I think it's easier to understand and map, but so what . . .

The reason I do it this way is based on creating songs with the layer strategy, which there is a basic rhythm section layer for drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and keyboards usually playing chords . . .

When I am happy with the basic rhythm section, I record the audio and then do a submix to consolidate it to a smaller number of tracks--perhaps one for drums, one for bass, and so forth--except I do everything in pairs of tracks or triples of tracks for panning purposes (far-left, center; far-right), although these are the individual instrument tracks, which then as a layer are consolidated to one stereo track . . .

Everything does not need to be super-consolidated; and since I focus on what one might call "popular music", I like to have dual kick drums, dual snare drum rimshots, dual or triple rhythm guitars, and so forth, but usually only one electric bass, which is panned top-center . . .

You can see and hear this in my projects in this forum . . .

SUMMARY

I created an Aria MULTI and used it in a NOTION score, which I saved as a template and then used the template to create more songs via opening the NOTION score and immediately doing a "Save As . . . ", which is what I think you want to do . . .

At first, I set each instrument in the Aria MULTI to a different channel pair, but it only worked for the instrument set to "1-2",; hence after thinking about it for a while, I set all of them to "1-2", and then it worked as expected and desired . . .

It's explained in the YouTube video (see above) . . .

Lots of FUN!

I read the original post a few more times, and this is a follow-up post with more information . . .

THOUGHTS

After thinking about it and reading the original post a few more times, I think there is another aspect to the problem, which is due to thinking that an Aria MULTI will provide meaningful names to the staves in a NOTION score, which as best as I can determine it will not do . . .

You can create an Aria Player MULTI and give it an unique user-defined name, but this is not going to map to each of the corresponding staves in the NOTION score having meaningful names . . .

The meaningful names in the NOTION score come from doing something in NOTION rather than in the Aria Player MULTI . . ,

After years of working with NOTION where NOTION was hosting the VSTi virtual instruments, I decided that it's easier to work in a ReWire session where Studio One Professional is the ReWire host controller and hosts the VSTi virtual instruments, while NOTION is a ReWire device running under control of Studio One Professional in its role as ReWire host controller, with the NOTION score comprising a set of ReWire MIDI staves , , ,

In this strategy, NOTION is focused on music notation and MIDI, which it creates and sends to Studio One Professional to be played by VSTi virtual instruments hosted in Studio One Professional . . .



It is similar to doing everything in NOTION, but if you are not using NOTION for real-time performances, then I think the ReWire MIDI Strategy is best, and it certainly is less complex than doing everything solely in NOTION . . .

It might be nice if an Aria MULTI could provide meaningful names for NOTION staves, but as best as I can determine this is not the way it works . . ,

One might suppose it's possible to create a single NOTION score with 100 to 200 staves of instruments, but when the VSTI virtual instrument engines are hosted in NOTION, this will be troublesome regardless of whether Aria Player MULTIs are used . . .

It is possible to have that number of ReWire MIDI staves in a NOTION score, since in the ReWire MIDI Strategy, NOTION is focused on music notation and MIDI, since NOTION is not hosting any VSTi virtual instruments and VST effects plug-ins . . ,

On the Studio One Professional side, I find that creating layers with 10 to 20 instruments works nicely and does not overload Studio One Professional, with this including some number of VST effects plug-ins, as well . . .

In other words, instead of trying to put everything in one NOTION score and one Studio One Professional ".song", it works better to work in layers, as explained in my previous post to this topic, although there actually will be one Studio One Professional ".song" that has more Audio Tracks as the layers are consolidated and submixed . . .

Create a layer and when happy with it, do some submixing and consolidation, followed by saving everything to a common folder for the song; zapping the first set of Instrument Tracks and replacing them with a new set of Instrument Tracks for the next layer, and so on--consolidating and submixing along the way, always keeping a logical named archive for the steps so you can backtrack when desired but otherwise go forward . . .

OBSERVATION

It takes a while to do all the configuration and setup work required for a reasonably complex song, and this can take a few hours overall, even when you have custom user-defined templates, user-defined presets, and so forth for VST effects plug-ins . . .

You might think it's a lot of time and a lot of work, but rollback the clock 50 or so years, and there were no personal computers, no digital music production applications, and everything was analog done with electromagnet tape machines in recording studios that cost millions of dollars, which restricted them to use by well-funded musical groups . . .

Configuring everything for a Beatles recording session probably require 10 to 15 people and a few hours, unless there was a symphony orchestra scheduled, in which case the number of people increased dramatically . . .

Most composers and musicians did not have access to that level of recording technology, because it cost too much . . .

Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, you can do everything with $10,000 to $25,000 on a computer in a walk-in closet or inside a Lincoln Towncar if you have a notebook computer and an AC converter to run the external digital audio and MIDI processor . . .

If it requires several hours over a few days to configure everything, perhaps one instrument at a time, this is fine with me, because I can do only one thing at a time no matter how it's done . . .

If it required one hour and 10 people to do the setup work for a Beatles recording session and I can do the same work in 5 hours, then great . . .

I am glad just to be able to do it without needing to be a hit recording artist or a millionaire . . .

And you can create your system in steps, getting virtual instruments and effects plug-ins a few at a time as your budget allows, and so forth for everything else . . .

It's at least the same quality and usually is higher quality than the multimillion dollar recording studios of half a century ago ()or longer) . . .

FACT: Doing elaborate and complex things requires a bit of work, some of which cannot be avoided.

Lots of FUN!

Thanks for the suggestions, and especially for reading my post again and following up.

I was writing from the perspective of being able to stay entirely in Notion, since the basic purpose of Notion, for me, is composition, and the template would be for being able to quickly begin working on a new idea. You're probably in the majority of people who now use Notion in tandem with Studio One, and your suggestions only work that way. You couldn't route everything to the 1-2 channel in the player and come out right working in Notion alone.

I do own Studio One and have used it some for the later stages of my process, but I haven't upgraded to the new version yet. I like the simplicity of Notion and if I want to continue that way it would be much easier just to load up several players, choose the instruments and save the file, and that way everything [would] read right on the score.

But if what read about the score editor in the new Studio One is true, it begs the question why you wouldn't start from scratch over there.

thomasbaxter wroteThanks for the suggestions, and especially for reading my post again and following up.

I was writing from the perspective of being able to stay entirely in Notion, since the basic purpose of Notion, for me, is composition, and the template would be for being able to quickly begin working on a new idea. You're probably in the majority of people who now use Notion in tandem with Studio One, and your suggestions only work that way. You couldn't route everything to the 1-2 channel in the player and come out right working in Notion alone.

I do own Studio One and have used it some for the later stages of my process, but I haven't upgraded to the new version yet. I like the simplicity of Notion and if I want to continue that way it would be much easier just to load up several players, choose the instruments and save the file, and that way everything [would] read right on the score.

But if what read about the score editor in the new Studio One is true, it begs the question why you wouldn't start from scratch over there.

I did a few more experiments and encountered the same problem I think you encountered . . .

THOUGHTS

For reference, at present I am using Aria Player v1.620, and it definitely gets confused . . ,

It's not a problem caused by NOTION . . .

I did another set of experiments where I used SampleTank 3 (IK Multimedia) and created a MULTI for drums and a MULTI for bass and guitar--all with no problems loading, reloading, and so forth , , ,

Each SampleTank 3 MULTI remembers itself and does not become confused . . .

The NOTION score where I used the two SampleTank3 MULTIS does not become confused, and it remember the meaningful names . . .

PLAN

If I can download a newer version of the Aria Player, I will do experiments to see if the bug has been fixed . . ,

For reference, the Aria Player I am using now came with Finale that I purchased in 2012, so it's a bit old . . .

UPDATE: I tried downloading and installing Aria Player 1.872 and 1.959, but the require a newer version of the Aria Engine, hence do not work here in the sound isolation studio , , ,

If I can find a new version of the Aria Engine, perhaps I can continue experimenting . . .

UPDATE: I found the Aria Engine update, but it doesn't work, so there's not much I can do other than suggest it's a problem with the Aria Player and Aria Engine--not NOTION, which I suggest because it works nicely with SampleTank (IK Multimedia) MULTIS saved in NOTION scores . , ,

SUMMARY

I encountered the same or similar problem, so if you are using a newer version of the Aria Player and Aria Engine, then it's probably a problem that has been around for years and nobody used MULTIS enough to encounter it and report it . . .

If the problem has been fixed in a new version, then the steps in my previous posts to this topic should work--they work with SampleTank3 MULTIS . . .

Creating a NOTION score with several VSTi virtual engines, each with one or more MULTIS is a relatively normal thing to do, and when the VSTI virtual engines are working correctly there are not problems . . .

I generally avoid MULTIS, but I have a few user-defined MULTIS in SampleTank and MachFive 3 (MOTU) and use them for certain styles of songs . . .

ANOTHER CONSIDERATION ~ LIMITED OR CUMBERSOME SOLOING

If you do this in NOTION, then you only can solo the original Aria Player instances, not the staves redefined via Change Instrument (SHIFT+i) . . .

This also is the case in the ReWire MIDI Strategy, hence limited soloing in the mixer is a drawback . . .

You can solo instruments, but it has to be done in the Aria Player, which is cumbersome . .

For a variety of reasons, I stopped messing with stuff like this and decided to use one instance of a VSTi for one instrument, although sometimes I have cymbals and hi-hats on the same staff running off the same instance, but mostly when I am too lazy to create separate instances for hi-hats and cymbals. And I do this with cowbells on the snare drum staff, as well . . ,

Lots of FUN!

I subsequently upgraded to Studio One 5 and just wanted to report that while the notation editor is a useful addition to Studio One, it doesn't use the same note entry system as Notion. So it doesn't really replace it.

I purchased GPO 5 from Sweetwater at a nice discount and now am installing it . . .

THOUGHTS

Mostly I am doing this to determine whether the gnarly problem wth the 2012 Finale (MakeMusic) version of the Aria Player has been fixed . . .

For reference, here in the sound isolation studio on the Mac Pro (Early 2008) running macOS El Capitan (10.11.6), the 2012 Finale version of the Aria Player gets confused when you create and save a MULTI, so I deleted it and installed the new version . . .

The new version of the Aria Player is better, and if you follow a few simple rules, then it does not get confused, although otherwise it also gets a bit confused when you do not follow the rules . . .

The information I provided previously is correct, but it works best with the current version of the Aria Player that comes with Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 . . .

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

(1) The GPO 5 MULTIS only affect the Aria Player and GPO 5. They do not affect the layout of the NOTON 6 score.

(2) Creating a NOTION score template is a matter of creating a new NOTION score and assigning the Aria Player to a staff, followed by creating a few more treble staves (basic staves) and then doing the "SHIFT+i" channel change to assign channels of the Aria Player to the basic treble or bass staves. Once you do this, you can rename the staves and then hide the change channel names, each of which you gave a meaningful name like "Solo Violin", "Solo Flute", and so forth.

[NOTE: Here in the sound isolation studio I use treble staves for everything, and set the octave range in NOTION Score Setup for the specific instrument, where for bass I set Middle C so that it's played two octaves lower than notated, but for guitar it's set to one octave lower than notated, and so forth. This way, i only need to remember 12 notes and 10 or so octaves, two of said octaves being reserved to annoy bats, birds, cats, dogs, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, and whales, as well as children under the age of five years who have not attended a KISS concert, since these are the only biologicals that can hear anything above perhaps 13-kHz . . . ]



(3) You need to delete all the notes on the staves, except the first notes, which you will delete manually by selecting each first note and then deleting it rather than trying to do it by lassoing, because if you lasso, then you also delete the hidden "SHIFT+i) stuff.

(4) After doing all that stuff, you can do a "Save As . . . " and give the NOTION score a name which has the word "Template" in it, so you know it's a score template.

(5) To use the score template to create a new score, you will open the score template and then immediately do a "Save As . . . " to give it a meaningful name for your new song . . .

OBSERVATIONS

This is the correct way to create a score template which uses a GPO 5 MULTI in the Aria Player . . .

It can use several GPO 5 MULTIS, but each one needs to have its own primary VST Instruments staff where the Aria Player is the assigned VSTi virtual instrument . . .

The Aria Player and its MULTI are focused on loading GPO 5 virtual instruments into the Aria Player, and this has nothing to do with the NOTION score, the names of staves on the NOTION score, and "SHIFT+i" channel assignments to basic treble or bass staves . . .

There are interactions, of course, but there are two separate and independent things that generally are considered to be templates:

(1) The MULTI is a template of instruments for a VSTI virtual instrument, in this instance the Aria Player.

(2) The NOTION score, itself, is a user-defined template when you clear the notes but keep the VSTi virtual instrument and channel assignments, which is the part of the work that NOTION does and has little to do with the Aria Player MULTI other than the NOTION score using the Aria Player as a VSTi virtual instrument.

Summarizing, the MULTI does not configure the NOTION score; instead, the MULTI is used to load and configure a set of up to 16 instruments from GPO 5 into the Aria Player . . .

The primary template aspect is what you do in NOTION, and you can save this as a template via "Save As . . . ", after deleting the notes in a specific way so that the NOTION score template has all the assignments but no notes . . .

Lots of FUN!

P. S. I might do a YouTube video on this, but I make no promises. And I like the GPO 5 flute, French Horn, and violin, since they are crisp but have nice textures, which is is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!